Search engine optimization (SEO) is changing faster than ever. It seems I read daily about more Google updates. Last year it was the infamous Panda update when they began re-evaluating how the search engine views quality content. Now I am reading more about how Google is changing the way it looks at links. Rest assured Google is in hot competition with Bing and to win that battle, Google needs to continue improving the relevance of its search results. After all, isn't that what we want from Google? Isn't that good customer service from Google? It is to me and it means we in the SEO business need to stay true to what delivers the best search results - rather than trying to "game" the system.

Business owners are always asking me how SEO works and what's important to achieve great search engine marketing visibility for the terms that describe the products and servcies they sell. So I went searching for good resources that can describe SEO in a way that is simple and straightforward, using terms someone not in the industry can easily understand. I found this great SEO video (click on the image to the left) on You Tube (only 3.5 minutes) that gives a great explanation. This video was created by Common Craft in cooperation with Search Engine Land, a leading search marketing resources organization full of great information about a variety of search engine marketing.

As a quick summary about the video, it lists 5 important elements for SEO: 1) titles of the web-page, 2) content on the page, 3) links coming into the page, 4) the actual wording of links on the page and coming from other websites, and 5) good reputation and fresh content. It is important to note that each web-page stands on its own in the eyes of the search engines. Your website might have 20, 50 or 1,000 pages and each of those pages stands on its own.

In the recent study, "2011 State of Digital Marketing Report" compiled by Webmarketing123, a California-based online marketing agency, it was found that SEO was the best performing online lead generation tactic for both B2B and B2C companies. While SEO may not be the best overall marketing tactic for some companies, as the internet continues to grow in its marketing, all companies should at least evaluate how SEO can perform for them.